The US House of Representatives voted Tuesday to pass a bill that will temporarily raise the debt ceiling by $480 billion through early December. 

Averting a potential default, the legislation passed along party lines with a vote of 219-206. It now moves to the desk of President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it.

Last week, the Senate approved a short-term hike to the federal debt ceiling in a 50-48 vote after weeks of discussions.

On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned of an "enormous amount at stake" if Congress fails to make another deal.

"A failure to raise the debt ceiling would probably cause a recession and could even result in a financial crisis. It would be a catastrophe," Yellen said on ABC's "This Week” program.

According to the Democrats, raising the debt ceiling is a bipartisan responsibility and Republicans should favor it as it includes spending that stemmed from former President Donald Trump’s administration./agencies

A victim recalled harrowing memories of an assault by a French priest that traumatized her and caused psychological issues.

Laurence Poujade, 55, head of the Sentinelle Association that works for victims of abuse in French Christian communities, spoke exclusively to Anadolu Agency and said she was sexually assaulted by a priest when she went to Guinea with a religious foundation 25 years ago.

France was shaken by revelations that 216,000 children have been sexually abused in churches since 1950. When cases of sexual abuse perpetrated by employees in private schools and institutions affiliated with the Catholic Church are added, that figure soars to 330,000.

According to the report released by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in Churches (CIASE), 15,000 adults have been subjected to sexual violence in churches in the last 70 years. The number rises to 35,000 with cases in church-affiliated institutions.

Poujade described the numbers as "worrying" and "shocking."

"This is a tsunami. It was shocking. These numbers are average. These numbers are actually higher because there are people who died or did not speak,” she said. “It is really important to reach these figures. The report enabled all these anonymous lives to go down in history. The report’s emphasis on the responsibility of the church is historic.”

Poujade said the numbers show the extent of abuse and a system that has been implemented to perpetrate (sexual) abuses and silenced victims.

She recalled the abuse she had to endure at the hands of a priest she had no spiritual bond or contact with before she was sexually assaulted.

“The priest threw me to the ground angrily, attempting to rape and sexually assault me, taking advantage of me being on the ground. When I got up to report what had happened to an authorized person, he beat me to keep me quiet,” she said.

She was 30 when the assault occurred.

‘The (Christian) community asked me to cut off all contact with my family and not to tell what happened’

“It had serious effects. The (Christian) community asked me to cut off all contact with my family and not to tell what happened. But my family understood because there were marks (on my body), they saw the bruises. I didn't have the freedom of speech to explain what caused it,” she said, referring to efforts by the church to keep her from taking.

The assault caused her to question her ideas about marriage and having children and Poujade said there was no one around her to talk to at that time.

“I was able to start talking (about this attack) after six years. I faced psychological problems because of this attack. My physical health gradually deteriorated,” she said.

Poujade said that it is important to include in the report that the Catholic Church should accept the findings of the probe and pay compensation to victims.

After the assault, her family founded the Religious Life and Family association to fight abuse cases and she has been the president of the Sentinelle Association for 10 years.

She told what happened to her to the commission

Poujade said victims that Sentinelle supports suffer consequences of sexual assault and some have committed suicide.

She told her story to the commission twice and said some of her recommendations were not included in its findings. Women had difficulty in making their voices heard in institutions, she said, also in CIASE.

Sentinelle started a petition to get churches to fulfill their responsibilities, Poujade said that not only the church but also society should do their best to bring churches to account.

Poujade said she had difficulty finding a job after the assault and it was not easy to restart her social and professional life after being in a religious community.

‘Adults are subjected to abuse’

“Many parents do not know that their adult children in (Christian) religious communities are being abused. This is of great concern because after the parents die, adult children will realize that they are on the wrong track and are under the protection of untrustworthy people,” said Poujade.

She said the president of the Bishops' Conference of France, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort’s statement on Oct. 6 that said, “the secrecy of the confession was stronger than the laws of the Republic,” attracted a great deal of criticism because it prevented the emergence of sexual abuse cases.

She said the secrecy of confession in churches should be re-evaluated in line with the Catholic faith so that children who have been sexually abused can speak.

CIASE member Laetitia Atlani-Duault stressed that confessional sessions should not prevent priests from reporting cases of child sexual abuse.

According to French law, anyone who has information about the sexual assault of minors under the age of 18, is obliged to report it to the police./agencies

The Turkish Coast Guard Command said it rescued as many as 313 asylum seekers in the Aegean Sea on Monday after they were pushed back by Greek authorities.

The naval force rescued 213 asylum seekers near Aydin, as well as Dikili, Foca, Menderes, Cesme, Urla, and Seferihisar districts in Izmir.

Separately, a coast guard team in the seaside town of Marmaris, Mugla in southwestern Turkey, rescued at least 75 asylum seekers from a rubber boat.

Meanwhile, a team was dispatched off Bodrum district in Mugla province after learning that 25 asylum seekers were stranded on a lifeboat.

Turkey has been a key transit point for irregular migrants who want to cross into Europe to start new lives, especially those fleeing war and persecution.

It already hosts 4 million refugees, more than any country in the world, and is taking new security  measures on its borders to prevent a fresh influx of migrants./aa

An endangered bird of prey, tracked by a satellite transmitter, has covered a distance of about 25,000 kilometers (15,500 miles) and traveled in 13 countries of two continents since it was caught in Turkey's eastern Igdir province one and a half years ago.

General Directorate of Nature Conversation and National Parks in Igdir attached a satellite transmitter to a pallid harrier ("Bozkir delicesi" or Circus macrourus) in April of 2020.

The harrier was then released into its natural habitat and traveled above Armenia, Georgia, and Russia, then entered northern Kazakhstan, reproducing in the Ozyornoye region of the country.

Once the summer was over, the bird of prey once again traveled back to Turkey after following the same course, then it flew above Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Chad, and Niger respectively, finally arriving in the Sokoto region of Nigeria.

The harrier spent the winter in Sokoto and returned to its breeding point in Kazakhstan after covering the same route once again, which corresponded to 24,991 kilometers (15.5 miles).

According to the data obtained through satellite tracking, the wild bird took a rest in some wetlands as well as touristic sites and fed itself, also flying for kilometers in those locations.

The highest and lowest flight altitude of the bird were respectively determined as 3,000 (9,842 ft.) and 376 meters (1,233 ft.) and its average traveling speed was 86 kilometers (53.4 miles) per hour except for the periods it rested.

Kayahan Agirkaya, a member of Aras Bird Ringing Station in Igdir, said the data provided by satellite transmitters were of great value for scientific studies, adding that Aras River Bird Paradise hosted a great variety of bird species.

Agirkaya went on to note that the harrier tracked was currently staying in Kazakhstan and the bird of prey would go back to Nigeria to spend the winter once the convenient times arise.

Pallid harriers are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species, and the Aras River Bird Paradise in Turkey remains to be one of their stop-points of the migration route./aa

The Association of Algerian Muslim Ulema on Monday rejected French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent claims that the Ottoman presence in Algeria amounted to colonization.

"The Ottomans who came to Algeria did not come as colonial occupiers, rather (they came) at the invitation of the Algerians … to help them defeat the Spanish Crusader aggression," Abdul-Razzaq Qassoum, the association’s chairman, said in a column by the Al-Basair newspaper. The newspaper is affiliated with the association.

Tensions have escalated between France and Algeria over remarks made by Macron on the North African country’s colonial past.

In a bid to palliate its atrocious colonial past, Macron claimed that “there was a colonization before the French colonial rule” in Algeria, alluding to the Ottoman presence in the country between 1514 and 1830.

According to Qassoum, the Ottomans, unlike France, did not kill Algerians, destroy their land or plunder their wealth.

Algerians “possessed a lot of wealth (under the Ottomans),” the Algerian scholar said.

He also noted that the Ottomans neither imposed their language on Algerians nor fought their beliefs.

“They (Ottomans) did not fight our belief, not even our Madhhab (Islamic school of law)."

On the contrary, Qassoum said the French colonial forces brought “tragedy” to Algeria and “misery” to its people.

Macron’s remarks in late September that the Algerian nation did not exist before the French colonial rule and that another colonization preceded his country’s sparked a storm of condemnations in Algeria.

Algerian President Abdelmedjid Tebboune condemned Macron’s remarks as an “unacceptable insult” to the martyrs, recalled his country’s Ambassador to France Antar Daoud for consultations, and closed airspace to French military aircraft used by the latter in its anti-terror operations in the Sahel.

In a televised interview on Sunday, Tebboune narrated an official account of the French massacre of nearly 4,000 worshippers during the 1830-1962 colonial era.

The worshippers were killed as they staged a sit-in inside an Ottoman Mosque called Ketchaoua in an effort to stop it from being converted into a church.

Algeria represents the most recent and bloodiest example of France's colonial history on the African continent.

Approximately 1.5 million Algerians were killed and millions more displaced in an eight-year struggle for independence that started in 1954.

France has also committed cultural genocide against Algeria since 1830, destroying Algeria’s 300-year-old Ottoman history and its own local identity, and also transforming many cultural and religious monuments in the country.

Paris has never officially apologized to Algeria as a state for its colonial policies./aa

The European Union added Monday six more Russians involved in the poisoning of opposition figure Alexey Navalny to its sanctions list.

The Council of EU also extended its sanctions regime for the use of chemical weapons until Oct. 16, 2022, the EU institution said in a statement.

The EU blacklist currently targets 15 people and two entities for being “directly responsible for the development and use of chemical weapons, as well as those providing financial, technical or material support.”

The list has already featured five high-ranking Syrian officials involved in the regime’s use of chemical weapons against its civilian population and four Russians responsible for the poisoning of former intelligence officer Sergey Skripal with a nerve agent.

In addition to these nine people, six new Russian individuals accused of playing a role in the Novichok attack against Navalny were added to the list.

A Syrian and a Russian research institute were also targeted by the EU restrictive measures.

The bloc adopted the sanctions regime consisting of a travel ban and asset freeze in 2018 in response to the Syrian regime’s attacks.

Syria has been in civil war since early 2011 since the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests.

According to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the Assad regime has used chemical weapons at least 17 times against its own population during the 10-year civil war.

In 2018, former KGB spy Skripal and his daughter Yulia were nearly poisoned to death with highly toxic Novichok nerve agent. They were admitted to hospital after being found unconscious in Salisbury, the UK, but they were both discharged from hospital after long treatments.

A similar military-grade chemical agent from the Novichok group was applied last year against Navalny, who recovered from the poisoning in Germany./agencies

Just months after devastating fires, residents of Greece's northern part of Evia island faced the raging storm Athena.

Although there were no casualties due to the storm, several residents were forced to evacuate their houses after torrential rain hit the island.

Flash floods caused by the heavy overnight rain created huge mudslides coming from the burned mountain areas pushing everything on its way towards the coastline.

Roads have been cut in two, while some have been submerged into the mud, causing huge problems in traffic, according to local media.

The coastline front in Achladia, as well as in Agia Anna, has been devastated, and residents of Kotsikia have seen equipment from their stores and houses float on the shore.

Till Sunday night, the fire brigade continued to pump water from houses.

According to the meteorological forecast, a strong wave of bad weather is expected also later on Monday.

The fire brigade received more than 145 calls for flooded houses and fallen trees in areas hit by the storm.

Government officials visited the affected areas to assess the damages.

"The state, as in other cases, will be by the side of the people affected and will assist in the restoration of these damages," said Christos Triantopoulos, the deputy minister to the prime minister in charge of state aid and recovery from natural disasters.

He added that emergency funding, totaling €20 million ($23.15 million), will be directed to northern Evia.

Since Monday morning, residents of areas affected by the storm were able to submit the relevant documents to receive state aid./aa